I am writing from an internet cafe in Palafrugell. I am surrounded by old and unemployed men, one of whom is speaking to me- probably in Catalan. I cannot understand a word he is saying. He has a poodle, and I think her name is Margaret. I bought a Coca Cola Light, and am paying 2 euros per 20 minutes – the cigarette smoke is free.
Things are fine right now – Unfortunately, when we got to the airport on Friday, we found out that my big suitcase with all of my carefully chosen outfits was not with us. It is either in the back seat of our car (at my mother´s condo) or it is at our house – a friend brought us to the airport. Since we had about 3 hours until our flight took off, we took a taxi to the nearest Target and I just grabbed a bunch of clothes and underwear while Wheat bought a $13 rollerboard to put it all in. Imagine a really not fun version of one of those spending spree shows, and you´ll get the picture. We paid for the taxi to wait for us, but he informed us that he could only do so for 25 minutes.
Lucky for us, my make up kit had all of my toiletries, my brown shoes, and my medication in it. We made our plane in plenty of time, and had an uneventful flight to Madrid, where we changed planes for Barcelona. I, of course, was in charge of asking all questions – but I am sure that my Spanish was like caveman Spanish at the moment. We took a bus to the Plaza de Catalunya, where I was determined to take the Metro. I had never taken the Metro in Barcelona, but it seemed pretty straightforward. I found the way to the Metro stop marked Sant Gervasi figuring that that was in the name of our hotel, so it had to be near there. I was wrong, and after lugging our bag for blocks and following the finger pointings of several citizens, we were finally able to hail a taxi to take us to the hotel.
I took a shower, and we slept for about 3 hours before getting up for dinner. I tried on some of my new acquisitions and naturally, some of the clothes didn´t fit. We will have to hem two of the pairs of pants that do. I will return the other clothes to Target when we return. I had to tie up the bottom of the legs of my velour sweat pants in order to go out that night. Wheat was so tired that he wanted to just hit a McDonald´s and go back to bed. But I refused to settle for that. We walked down the Ramblas and found a restaurant on a side street called Santa Anna. I had a version of pan con tomate with grilled vegetables and goat cheese and some sangria. Wheat had a pizza.
We found out that although the stores are usually closed on Sundays, this was a special weekend – los Rebaixes. That means the day that all of the stores offer big big discounts on their clothes. We got up the next morning, put our bags in the hotel storage, and took the Metro to El Corte Ingles, a big department store. We had an unimpressive lunch at the top floor cafeteria, then hit the sales. Believe me, trying on clothes with a size system that I am not familiar with was not what I planned to do on my vacation. I bought a pair of pants, a shirt, and a skirt, after trying on a LOT of different sizes and leaving all of my clothes on the floor of the dressing room. Apparently, that is not done in Spain, but I did not care much. I just wanted to find the train to Palafrugell and get us on it so that I can take some time off as interpreter.
My time is running out, so I will continue this later!
Maison Celeste 